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December 2016 Income Report

The beginning of the month is here and that means a blog income report! I love blog income reports because they help hold me accountable, show me what I have accomplished, and where I need to grow. Each month I share marketing strategies that I try to grow my blog and business. I share ideas that I tried and then what worked and didn’t work. My hope is that my blog income reports show my wins, losses, and lessons that will help you on your blogging journey too!

One Word to Describe December: Chill

The Numbers: December

Category

November

December

Growth/Loss

Visitors (Users)

1,004

667

-1,165

Returning Visitors

31.64%

22.80%

-8.84%%

Pageviews

5,225

1,470

-3,775

Bounce Rate

54.20%***

71.48%

***

Newsletter Subscribers

1,156

1,264

+108

Women Winning Online Facebook Group

1,899

2,162

+263

Twitter Followers

2,289

2,298

+9

Facebook Fans

246

247

+1

Pinterest Followers

1,571

1,732

+161

******My stats were funky in November. I got hit by a Russian spammer. JOY! I want to always be real with you guys and share with you my real stats. My bounce rate is completely off because of it and I can’t figure it out. My guess is it is closer to 71% for November.

I have four main goals for my blog:

Help people through my writing and services.

Increase pageviews every month.

Increase my email list every month.

Earn an income through services, classes, products, reviews, and advertisements.

Let’s take a look at how I did meeting my goals this month!

Are you ready to start your own blog? Awesome! You are going to be great at it! Check out my step-by-step tutorial on how to get your blog up and running in just minutes!

December’s Posts

December Goals Win or Miss?

My goals for December are not very big. It is the holiday season and planning season for me. My focus is on working with my Society ladies, prepping my business for 2017, and most importantly enjoying my family during the holidays without stressing about my business.

8. Strategic Plan for January 2017: Win

Number of People I Served in November: 3,426 people! (yes!)

December Income Report

Note some of these links are affiliate links including items I have personally used. Please see my affiliate disclosure here. If you have any questions about my income or expenses please leave me a comment below!

Previous Income Reports

Blog Income Report: What Worked

1. Taking Time Off

My plan for December was to take the month off and not work too hard. I wanted to spend the time enjoying the holidays with my family. Truthfully I didn’t want to add more things to do during this busy season in our lives. Not only is it everything with the holidays but we also have school events and a break thrown into the mix, plus spending time with our friends and family.

I made a decision mid-fall that I would take most of December off. I wanted to not put this pressure on myself and my family to try to get a whole lot done for my business during this season. Instead I spent time connecting with my kids and my husband. I slept more, read more books, and enjoyed cozy nights by the fire. It was just what my mind, body, and soul needed during this busy time. I feel fortunate that I work in a business where I can afford to take that kind of time off!

Takeaway: When we work online it is far, far too easy to be on all the time. When we work at home it is too easy to always try to squeeze in more work. I am a sucker for this. One more post, one more glance at the phone, one more until I am no longer present at home. My biggest takeaway is take the time to step away from the blog sometimes and spend it with the people you love. You may not get to your blogging destination faster, but you will enjoy your life and your people more and isn’t that what matters the most?! My whole goal is to be successful with my blog. But if I get to the top and I am alone, what’s the point? Take time for your people and take them on the journey with you.

2. Strategy Sessions

Now even though I wasn’t hard at work writing new posts or doing a lot of promotions, there was something fun I was working hard on. The Society of Winning Women Strategy Sessions. My friend Elizabeth challenged me not to take the whole month off just for me. But to find a way that I could help women and help them figure out their goals for 2017.

Not one to back down from a challenge I thought why not? If I can get a small group of women together, do a weekly Q&A, and help them with their goals, that would be fun! So I did just that!

I created a four week mastermind group where we had a Q&A thread every Thursday and worked on our 90 day goals. I was there during the week to help with any other questions they had. I shared tips that I was using in my blog to help me grow. I launched this idea on December 1st with a kickoff of December 8th. I had seven women join and I was so happy!

It was the perfect size group for a small mastermind! I find in these smaller mastermind sessions that people are more comfortable being open and vulnerable with each other. I had a lot of fun working more closely with these women and am thinking about doing something like this more often. I also think a lot of them got more clear on exactly where they are headed in 2017 and that was fun to watch too!

Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone and try something different with your blog especially if you can help people. Look at your blog and business. What 4 week mini-challenges can you run? How can you think outside of the box to help people and bring money into your business? Also, take the time to network with other people. I would have never tried this idea if my friend Elizabeth hadn’t pushed me to do it. Thank you Elizabeth!

3. Planning Time for 2017

If you have been following me for an length of time you know I am a planner. I always joke that my lists have lists. 🙂 (They do by the way!) One of my most favorite things to do since I was a little girl is planning for the New Year. I have never been one to do resolutions because I don’t think they work, but I do love setting goals for the upcoming year.

Something I have been struggling with in my blog is not having the time to set goals and make plans. For the last several months I have felt like an assistant of my blog instead of the CEO. I was just working to get things done instead of being strategic and focusing on my long term goals. It was frustrating me quite a bit.

At the beginning of December my husband came up with a great idea. He realized that college and high school kids would be on break for part of this month. He said “why don’t you see if some of our sitters can come in and watch the kids so you can work?”

Brilliant idea! What I heard was “Why don’t you have our sitters come in so you can go to a quiet place in the library and plan out your 2017 goals?” It was like music to my ears and that’s just what I did! The last two weeks of 2016 I had sitters come in for 4-5 hours, three days a week to watch the kids. I took off for the library and locked myself in a tiny room with windows and wrote and plotted and planned. The end result was a plan that I am excited about for my blog and a plan that I know in my heart will help other women! I came away from that time so pumped for what 2017 holds!

Now that this post is written a week into the New Year I have to say that the time I took to do the planning has paid off. I am more focused, I have my goals hanging on my wall, and I know exactly how I am going to grow and help people. This was the best thing I could have done for my blog and business!

Takeaway: As bloggers there comes a point where we need to put down the blog posts, walk away from the social media, and focus on our goals. What do we want to get out of our blogs? What do we want to accomplish? More importantly who do we want to help and how will we get there? The best thing you can do for the health and growth of your blog is to step away from all the noise and create a plan to grow. If you haven’t done this for 2017 it’s not too late! Take a Saturday off, hit up the library, and plan until you can’t plan anymore. Break down your yearly goals into monthly and weekly tasks. Hang them up proudly to remind yourself what you want to accomplish. It’s an awesome way to stay motivated every single day!

4. Not Writing

Can I be honest with you? The last few months I haven’t loved my blog posts. They were shorter than I prefer and not as helpful as I want them to be. They also didn’t feel like they flowed together. The posts seemed random. I wasn’t following my own advice of following a content calendar. I was sitting down to write just to write, instead of writing with a focus in mind.

So in December I took the month off from writing blog posts. I published one income report because I want to stay consistent with that. I made a decision that unless I was writing posts that flowed together and were helpful, that I wasn’t going to write. My readers deserve better than that and so does my blog.

Taking the month off from writing was so therapeutic for me! It made me realize how much I love to write, how much I need to write! But I also need to know I am putting meaningful words out there and not words that are cluttering the Internet. I also knew I didn’t have that in me for the month of December. Like I mentioned above December was all about my family, the holidays, the strategy sessions, and planning for 2017. It kind of felt good to focus on those things so I could come back in January 2017 with killer posts that make a difference!

Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to take a break from writing blog posts. If writing posts starts to feel like a hard slog it is okay to take a break. Your blog will always be here. Sometimes taking a break from writing is the best thing you can do for your blog. You will come back refreshed with content that will blow people away. There are no rules to this blogging game so feel free to give yourself some time off from writing when you need it!

Blog Income Report: What Didn’t Work

Before I jump into what didn’t work I want to add a note onto this. I had a hard time coming up with what didn’t work because overall I am pleased with how December went. No it wasn’t my highest month for income and numbers, but I accomplished exactly what I set out to do. That being said there is always room to improve which is why I kept this section in for this month. 🙂

1. Not Writing

What? How can not writing fit into the worked and didn’t work category? For starters, while not writing worked for me personally, it didn’t work for the blog. When I share a new blog post every week I get more pageviews, more email subscribers, and more people purchasing Find Your Tribe Online. I share the post with my email subscribers and the Women Winning Online Facebook group. Doing those things brings people back to my blog.

It’s not that people didn’t visit my blog, it’s that I didn’t get a lot of new traffic either. I knew I wouldn’t if I sacrificed my writing and I was okay with it. But I definitely had a dip in my numbers because of it.

Takeaway: Writing consistent posts is important to the health of our blogs. Our new material draws new people in and brings older visitors back. It gives people the opportunity to read our new material and visit our old stuff while they are there. When we aren’t consistent with our writing it can hurt our numbers. Like I mentioned above it is perfectly fine to take a break and you should, but overall consistency with your writing is part of what will help your blog grow!

2. Not Feeling Well

This part is scary. I am scared to put this out into the world for fear of what you will think of me and how you will perceive me going forward. But my goal is to be 100% transparent with you and well with me too. I have hidden so much in the shadows for too many years and I don’t want to do that anymore.

Someday I will write the whole story, but because of my traumatic childhood, I suffer from depression as well as post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Those are my official diagnoses anyway. I spent all of 2015 plus 2016 deep in therapy working through things and working on me. I was put on medication in 2015 and able to go off of it in the first part of 2016. Things were going amazing until this fall when the darkness started to creep back in. My husband noticed it first and I think I was hesitant to see that it was coming back. I had done so much work and it felt like I was going backwards.

But I wasn’t okay. No matter that I wished the depression wasn’t back, it was, and I needed to deal with it. I have worked too hard to get better and feel better and I wasn’t willing to go back. Plus my kids and my husband deserve more. Heck, I deserve more.

I put this out there to show that I am human and that outside of blogging I have a real life that isn’t always pretty. But my driving force for putting this out there is for you. Mental illness is real and it is not something to be ashamed of. Too much shame is put on those that suffer.

One of my purposes in life is to help erase that stigma. Erasing that stigma starts with me and me being honest with you. For part of December I didn’t engage with people because I simply couldn’t. My depression was full blown and it took everything I had to function some days. I want you to know that you are not alone. I am here with you and I am here for you. If you ever find yourself so down you can’t get up, I am here for you. I know how it feels. I have lived it, I have experienced it, and I still am. There are people in my real life that have lifted me up during this time. There are people online that have lifted me up during this time. I am here to be that person for you. You are not alone.

I am 100% grateful for the time we live in and the people around me. I have a very astute therapist who saw this happening and put me back on my depression medication. Is it something I will be on forever? Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that the medicine, along with a lot of prayer and Jesus, good therapy, a loving husband, and supportive friends, I am back to feeling like me. And oh am I so grateful! When I am well and I am me I can give so much to the world and take in so much for me. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not endured. We are meant to thrive, not to survive. We are supposed to feel good!

Takeaway: Above all make sure you are taking care of yourself. Whether or not you have a mental illness, please take care of you. You are no good to anyone if you aren’t taking care of yourself. And if you do suffer from a mental illness and need a friend, please know my door is always open. I get it and I am here for you without any judgement.

3. Not Promoting

For the month of December I think I promoted my blog like three times. I didn’t do any promo days in Facebook groups. I didn’t go into groups and help people. I didn’t even have my Tailwind queue filled up! I let it lapse after the first few days in December.

Part of this was the fact that I was laying low in December. Part of it was I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t have the energy to do it. I am okay with this. I think I have said it enough, but I needed the break and that is okay! My break resulted in low numbers for my blog and I am okay with it.

Takeaway: There is this myth out there that we can blog and people will just show up. Wrong! The “build it and they will come” theory does not work for blogging. You have to be out there promoting your blog whether it’s in Facebook groups or on Pinterest. There is nothing passive about blogging. When you don’t promote your blog people don’t know you are there so take time every week to get out there and show off your blog!

7. Sell 50 copies of Find Your Tribe Online Course (coming soon!)

8. Be visible online every single day

Do Facebook livestream 3 times a week in Women Winning Online.

Ask questions in my top 3-5 Facebook groups 3 times a week.

Answer questions in my top 3-5 Facebook groups 3 times a week.

I am so excited for a rocking January! I can’t wait to get out there and help more women drive more traffic to their blogs! I can’t wait to fully get back into my writing! It doesn’t look like a lot to do on paper, but somehow I always find myself running short on time. I hope your January is off to a great start!

What are your goals for January and how did your December go? I would love to hear about it! Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you for taking the time to leave your comments!

December 2016 Income Report was last modified: February 6th, 2017 by Jen Snyder

Hi I'm Jen: Wife to one great guy, mom to the best 3 crazies a woman could ask for and a business owner. My passion is to help women build and grow their online business, so they can have the flexibility to do the work they love while spending time with the people they love. Join in the conversation on my blog and learn how you can do just that!

Found your blog through Blog Beautiful FB Page. I really like your blog and all of this info is so useful! I will be surely checking out some of your resources! As a style blogger I have been concentrating on promoting my blog more, growing my audience and engaging more. I don’t make money from my blog yet but that’s my goal for 2017! It’s just hard to know where to get started marketing wise.

Katie, I am so sorry I didn’t respond to this sooner, but I do thank you for your kind words. I hope you have been able to use the information provided to help you grow your blog! Now that we are well into 2017, how has the process of monetizing gone for you> Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I would be more than happy to help!

Hi Jen, my heart goes out to you. If you ever need to hear how nutrition can help you when you are feeling low, please reach out to me.

Thank you for publishing your results and goals every month. They help me stay motivated and keep going with my own blog. I have big goals for this year and I know that with your help I can get there. I appreciate everything you do!Alina @ Orgali Holistic Nutrition recently posted…2016 Accomplishments and 2017 Dreams and Plans for the Future

Thank you, Alina! I am doing feeling better and will keep you in mind if I need some help with how nutrition can help when feeling low. I’m glad to hear that the results and goals I share each month are effective in motivating you with your own blog. I know you can get there too and don’t hesitate to let me know if there is anything I can help you with! Thanks for commening.

Jen, I love your transparency here. Yours is one of the few income reports that I feel is really there to help other bloggers, and not just boast about how great you’re doing. You’re doing an amazing job with your site, and I can tell that 2017 is going to be an amazing year for you!Tiffany Griffin recently posted…How to Get Your First 100,000 Pageviews From Pinterest

Thank you, Tiffany! I believe it’s important to be authentic and show what worked and what didn’t work as expected in my income reports. There’s always something to be learned from our efforts that should be shared with others. Thank you for your kind words and for commenting. Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with!

Jen, I am so glad you did the master mind group even though you were laying low. It was a huge benefit for me in getting focused on a 90 day plan. Your input on some of the more technical things was also very valuable to me. Thank-you for sharing your humanness. I appreciate the reminder, even though we all face struggles we can be of service in spite of our own struggles or sometimes because of our struggles we are of service.Tamara @ Parenting 2 Home Kids recently posted…How to Deal with Parenting Conflicts When You are Not Together

Thank you so much, Tamara! It’s sweet of you to say and I’m glad that the mastermind group was so beneficial for you. We can be of service despite struggles or because of them. Glad you’re getting focused on you 90 day plan and look forward to the progress you make with it. Thanks for commenting!

Thanks for this, Jen. I know it costs to be brave, but being brave also comes with rewards. May you be richly rewarded.
I did not know there was a “Society” Haha! It sounds interesting…well, a lot more than interesting.
I (we) already spend December resting, as a matter of habit. Think jigsaw puzzles and updating photo scrapbooks. Mmm… And it is wonderful but I tend to get lazy instead of revived. I want to stay in December forever. 🙂
My goal for January was to begin preparing to be self-hosted. I do the “one word” thing and I do believe the Lord is telling me “now”. That is scary. When I jumped into blogging, hosting was way more expensive than it is now, and I went with a free site. I also believed the lie that daily posting was the thing. I posted every single day. No exceptions. If I was going to be too busy, I scheduled. And now I am sure I am burned out, but I have found my real purpose in it all and quite a tribe, if they will forgive my months off that I took when I just could not write any more.
I’m getting there. It is hard for me, because I am so terrified of losing money–a resource I cannot afford to lose. If that makes sense, duh. 😉 I feel your input has been placed in my path to be the tonic I need to get me turned around, back into writing and posting, and headed in the right direction.
And I’m sorry you had to go through trauma to get here. Maybe we all have to? Idk. Anyway, thanks for your openness!Katharine recently posted…Poison-Apple Pie

Thank you for your kind words, Katharine! Yes, it costs to be brave, but it’s so true that there are rewards to being brave as well. December does have a way of making one want to hibernate, but I’m glad you had a peaceful December. I like that you choose a word for focus for the new year and that the Lord is telling you that the word is “now”. I’m also to hear that despite the blog burnout, which is more than understandable with the mere thought of posting every day, that you now feel you’ve found your purpose with it as well as your tribe, but even beyond that, I am honored that I was able to in some way inspire you to get you back into the writing groove. I think perhaps you are right in that we all have some sort of trauma to have to go through in order to get to where we are supposed to be. Please let me know if you have anything that I can help you with and thank you for taking the time to comment.

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Meet Jen

Hi I'm Jen: Wife to one great guy, mom to the best 3 crazies a woman could ask for and a business owner. My passion is to help women build and grow their online business, so they can have the flexibility to do the work they love while spending time with the people they love. Join in the conversation on my blog and learn how you can do just that!

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